Urbanization can help reduce income inequality

The global community has been confronted with rising income inequality, in particular, for those least developed countries (LDCs), since the same level of inequality as in advanced countries would push many LDCs into abject poverty. This paper focuses on income inequality in developing countries, particularly LDCs. First, we demonstrate the infeasibility of fiscal measures in resolving income inequality even in developed countries. Second, we show that inequality in LDCs can be largely explained by urban-rural gap. Third, we uncover the benign impacts of urbanization on urban-rural gap. This leads us to propose an out-of-box strategy—containing income inequality by promoting well-managed urbanization. Fourth, we reveal a misperception that may have contributed to the neglect of urban-rural gap in constituting national inequality. This has possibly caused anti-urbanization mentalities and practices, with adverse distributional consequences. Finally, we provide evidence-based policy suggestions aimed at reducing income inequality and poverty—two major goals of SDGs.

From the Big Picture to Detailed Observation: The Case of the GEF IEO’s Strategic Country Cluster Evaluations

This chapter introduces strategic country cluster evaluations (SCCEs), a concrete example of how the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has dealt with the increasing complexity of GEF programming. This complexity reflects the interconnectedness—in terms of both synergies and trade-offs—between socioeconomic development priorities and environment conservation imperatives that is typical of many country settings in which GEF projects and programs are implemented, such as least developed countries and small island developing states. SCCEs address this complexity by applying a purposive evaluative inquiry approach that starts from aggregate analyses designed to provide trends and identify cases of positive, neutral, or negative change, and proceeds to in-depth data gathering aimed at identifying the specific factors underlying the observed change in those specific cases. By establishing the interconnectedness and sequencing of the various evaluation components, rather than conducting these in parallel, SCCEs provide an opportunity to focus on a limited set of purposively selected issues that are common in clusters of countries and/or portfolios. This enables a comprehensive understanding of the factors at play in complex national and local settings.

Case Studies on Applying Knowledge Economy Principles for Economic Growth in Developing Nations

The authors demonstrate through specific case studies, representative of Civil Society in Least Developed Countries (LDCs), how user-acquired knowledge has the potential to impact both economic growth and economic development. In the interconnected, interdependent 21st century world of full participation as envisioned in UN Agenda 2030, it is essential to equip the people of developing nations with the tools to participate, grow, and develop themselves. This chapter both illustrates the importance of education and lifelong learning as well as highlighting the potential of a robust learning experience platform in geographies in which issues of infrastructure, connectivity, and access are some of the greatest challenges to overcome.

Using a Realist Framework to Overcome Evaluation Challenges in the Uncertain Landscape of Carbon Finance

In 2013, the United Kingdom Department for International Development and the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy published a business case for the Carbon Market Finance Programme (CMFP). The core mandate: to build capacity and develop aids for least developed countries in sub-Saharan Africa to access finance via the carbon market. The chosen strategy involved signing emission reduction purchase agreements with private sector enterprises, using the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to verify generation of tradeable certified emissions reductions. The World Bank’s Carbon Initiative for Development (Ci-Dev) would implement the 12-year program. The team for the 2019 midterm evaluation found that program uncertainty—from sociopolitical challenges in pilot markets to global indecision on the future of Article 6 and carbon markets—would complicate assessing progress toward business case objectives. The collapse and failed recovery of the carbon market impacted underlying assumptions of the CMFP’s theory of change, and uncertainty about CDM’s future complicated evaluation of program sustainability. This chapter presents a practical approach to using realist evaluation to overcome the contextual uncertainties of the carbon market landscape, providing strengths and weaknesses of the approach applied and recommending a revised approach for future evaluations.

Współpraca Unii Europejskiej z wybranymi państwami niedemokratycznymi Afryki Subsaharyjskiej w obszarze poszanowania praw człowieka

In Art. 3, para. 5, the Treaty on European Union (TEU) lays down the objectives of the Union in relations with the wider world, which are further explained in detail in Art. 21. In the first place, para. 5 refers to the promotion of the Union’s values. The list of values can be found in Art. 2 TEU (“The Union is founded on…”), which lists the principle of democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights, human dignity, freedom and equality. They are to be upheld and promoted by the Union in the wider world. Thus, they are directly linked to external policy. Next, the list of values in Art. 2 is repeated in Art. 3, para. 5 as objectives of the Union’s external policy and in Art. 21, para. 1 as principles. For this reason, international agreements concluded between the EU and third countries all contain a “human rights clause” as an essential element of the agreement, the violation of which might result in the suspension of the agreement. This article focuses on the human rights clause in relations between the EU and selected non-democratic Sub-Saharan African countries. The main legal basis governing bilateral relations between the EU and those countries is the Cotonou Agreement. The “human rights clause” is to be found in Art. 9 thereof. This clause is especially interesting since it is the only one that has been implemented in practice. Moreover, it is often presented as the most elaborate one, and as a consequence is very often shown as a “model” that should be followed in other international agreements, especially in association agreements. So, the “human rights clause” contained in the Cotonou Agreement has its own characteristic features. Firstly, as it was mentioned above, it is the only one that has been activated in practice. Secondly, the “non-execution clause” is much more detailed, and finally, much more emphasis is laid on political dialogue and on the consultation procedure. This paper provides a propaedeutic analysis of legal cooperation between the EU and selected non-democratic Sub-Saharan countries in the area of human rights protection. Its main objective is to answer the following questions: to what extent the EU cooperates with such countries? What are the issues the clause covers? Is it effective? To what extent could it be enhanced? For analysis, the following countries have been chosen: Chad, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. According to the Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World report, the Global Freedom Scores for all these countries do not exceed 35 points, which equates to lack of democracy. Moreover, another feature which all of them have in common is a very low score on the Human Development Index (HDI), which means that all of them belong to the poorest and least developed countries in the world.

Climate Change as a Challenge for the Economy

According to historical climatology, climate and climate change have always had an impact on human society. Anthropological climate change is happening fast and will indisputably affect the global economy for decades to come. This paper provides a review of the expectations of leading economists and organisations on the magnitude of this effect. It clarifies the different approaches used to quantify the future economic loss attributed to climate change. Despite the different approaches used, all the authors examined in the paper foresee a negative impact of the climate change on the global economy. The different approaches result in different predictions about the magnitude of the impact. The authors express similar positions about the geography of the damages that will be caused by the climate change. The most affected countries will be most likely those in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. A moral paradox arises that the least developed countries that are not at fault for anthropogenic climate change will have to carry the economic burden of its consequences. The paper also suggests and compares a variety of measures that could be taken in order to adopt to and mitigate the negative impacts of climate change on the economies.

COVID-19 in Afghanistan: Evaluating Health Vulnerability and Identifying Controlling Mechanism

Background: The insistent range of coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis and its permeation into least developed countries has escalated the bar of countries fragility and susceptibility. Afghanistan is amongst the most affected countries by the COVID-19 pandemic certainly due to its poor health infrastructure and conflict affected demography. Objective: This study intends to assess the health vulnerability profile and identifying the control mechanism of the north and northeast regions of Afghanistan using the IPCC framework. Method: A pre-evaluated online questionnaire (Google form) and mobile survey of 361 households distributed in 8 provinces across the both zones to collected the primary data. Exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity covered the three main components of vulnerability index, weighing method of Iyenger and Sudershan is used to estimate the fabricate vulnerability index. Result: The province’s health vulnerability status was classified to the different groups based on beta distribution. Based on the vulnerability index, 62.5% of provinces were highly vulnerable, 25% moderately and 37.5% were least vulnerable. Conclusion: In north-east region people were highly vulnerable to COVID-19 in terms of sensitivity and exposure, with low copping capacity to cope with COVID-19 pandemic risks compare to the north zone. Recommendation: Enhancing health and hygiene facilities and a handful of lowcost methods such as strengthen informal safety nets and introducing small-scale regional infrastructure projects, could be most cost effective and viable options. Originality: The research work is original and has not been published in other publications. As well, no financial support has been received for the study.

ONLINE PAYMENT OPTIONS AND CONSUMER TRUST: DETERMINANTS OF E-COMMERCE IN AFRICA

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of online payment options and consumer trust on the awareness and perception of e-commerce in Africa. A five-construct model was developed and empirically tested utilizing the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique to probe answers for the variables under study. 760 professionals and college students who reside in Somalia responded to our online questionnaire, then 744 clean responses were selected after removing uncompleted answers. The study results determined that the availability of locally popular payment options such as mobile payment in Africa affects the level of awareness and public perception towards e-commerce. Moreover, the current global online payment options overlook the local technologies popular in Africa. Also, consumer trust was found to be a good determinant of the awareness and perception of e-commerce in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). This paper finds that including more payment options would make a difference in Africa. It also shows that low consumer trust could be solved if consumers are given assurances for their online financial transactions. This paper contributes to the existing literature proving that various online payment options and consumer trust can be strong determinants of e-commerce, even in LDCs such as Somalia. Also, it added a new value to the current understanding of the impact of both awareness and perception of e-commerce on the propensity for online shopping by finding contradictory results in our research context.

Constraints Encountered by Wheat Producers in Adoption of Wheat Production Technology in Faizabad District of Uttar Pradesh, India

Wheat is a major staple food crop; it is one of the major sources of protein in the least developed countries and middle-income countries and in terms of caloric and dietary intake. The present study was conducted to identify the constraints in the adoption of wheat production technology in the Masaudha and Sohawal community developments blocks of Faizabad district. Data were collected with the help of personal interview methods and a pre-trial interview schedule. One hundred and twenty respondents were selected from twelve villages that were selected at random. Findings showed that 52.5% of the wheat-growers were of middle age (36–50 years) and 53.33% were literate, while 22.5% of the respondents had received education up to the primary level. Agriculture was the main occupation of most of the respondents and the income level of the respondents was also low, while farmers met the respondents occasionally to increase their income and to learn new skills. So the results showed that the constraints were responsible for the low adoption of wheat production techniques, however, some of them were the most significant such as lack of seed technology, lack of knowledge about seed treatment, lack of knowledge about soil analysis technology, plant protection and Lack of knowledge about irrigation technology Lack of knowledge about advanced types of equipment, etc. This trend means that more educational effort needs to be made by the extension agency by way of improving knowledge, adopting new wheat farming techniques, and accelerating the pace of production.